Star Wars with occasional sarcasm

The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams was on The Daily Show last night – technically to promote Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, which he produced – but he did tell a story from the Star Wars set. Turns out, Harrison Ford wasn’t the only one injured in the door incident… And Abrams has a pretty good Woody Allen impression to go with his Lawrence Kasdan. Who knew?

Today’s hottest Star Wars rumor comes from Cinelinx, where Jordan Maison says he’s heard that there’s still movement happening on live-action TV – and not just one series, but three.

It’s not a shock that Lucasfilm would follow in the footsteps of corporate stepsibling Marvel, who debuted Daredevil, the first of four limited series, on Netflix earlier this year.

We don’t know what (or who) the Star Wars ones would cover, but Jordan is guessing they might begin about 2017.

I’m still not thrilled with the idea of yet more TV, but a Netflix series may be the least annoying way to do it: Drop a complete set of 12-13 episodes, let it marinate for a few months, then drop something new. Of course, it all ultimately depends on what they do with it…

Despite a hefty amount of fan grumbling over the focus on ‘practical effects’ coming out of The Force Awakens publicity machine, I doubt anyone actually believes that the film isn’t going to have any CGI. (And, let’s face it, us hardcore fans aren’t the audience that they’re going for by saying that in the first place.) But if you’re wondering, and don’t mind spoilers, Making Star Wars has some (supposed) details about the completely CGI shots that are in the film, and where practical effects are are used.

→ Also on MSW, a few Rogue One details, and how they relate (or not) to The Force Awakens, via a bit of creative recycling.

Before you start going off about how fast The Force Awakens is going to beat Jurassic World‘s box office record (yawn) be sure to listen to the latest Full of Sith. Predictive box office talk is usually beyond tedious, but there’s a lot of smart thinking here on summer movies vs. winter movies, how little it actually matters in our case, and other factors. (No, nobody is doubting it’s going to make a ton of money.)

This Wednesday brings Star Wars #7 (preview,) a bridge issue which focuses on Obi-wan during his time on Tatooine.

In related news, the first collected edition of the new Marvel titles is also a record-breaker – Marvel is expecting to sell more than 200K copies of Star Wars Vol. 1: Skywalker Strikes, Comicbook.com reports. It’s expected in early October.

We’re just under a year away from the start of the third Celebration Europe, and 3-Day Adult tickets for the convention are already sold out. It will be held at London’s ExCeL Center on July 15-17 in 2016.

Celebration Anaheim in April, the first Celebration to sell out most badges, was attended by about 60K fans.

Jonathan Aris (Sherlock, The Game) has a part in Rogue One, the BBC’s Lizo Mzimba reported today. Aris will be playing Senator Jebel, according to his page on Spotlight. (The Rogue One listing has since been removed.)

For those going full spoiler, here’s a new wrinkle: TheForce.Net has a new summary of The Force Awakens, which seemingly claims to be from someone who’s read the novelization. (Seemingly.) It overlaps with some of what we’ve heard from the Making Star Wars camp, but there are some pretty key differences. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? I don’t know, and I’m not fully buying into anything, but there’s certainly a part of me side-eyeing this new entry into the game. (And, shocker, apparently it’s something that’s been floating around Reddit, always a sign of quality.)

It does reference some new thinking on the lightsaber we see in the second trailer that’s been kicking around lately… I think that bit may have some merit, but it’s neither here nor there at this point.